I was born and raised in Gwangju, a city in southwest South Korea, where I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and later a Master of Arts in Pedagogy, both from Chonnam National University. I held multiple positions as a professional educator for 14 years. I taught English in a variety of school settings, served as a department head of curriculum design and professional development, and served as a teacher trainer for the Gwangju Teacher Training Center. During this period, my persistent interest was in integrating educational technology into classrooms in ways that would benefit K-12 learners. During much of this time I led two action research groups of teachers, funded by the Ministry of Education. The research groups designed technology integration models, developed courseware for classrooms, and provided teachers with technical training. I was awarded Best Teacher of the Year in 1999 by the Korean English Teachers’ Association in recognition of my innovations for K-12 education. I was also awarded Best Courseware Designer in national competitions several times in 1997 through 1998. During this time, I realized that educational technology should be integrated with learning theories and empirical research. I earned a doctorate in Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University, where I started research on pedagogical agents. Using characters in courseware, which, I believed, could make learner/computer interaction more social and humanistic, has fascinated me. During my studies at FSU, I was awarded Gagne/Briggs Outstanding Doctoral Student Award, Ruby Diamond Future Professor Award, and Liliana Muhlman Masoner Outstanding International Student Award by the Department in 2004. I was awarded 2003 ECT Foundation Mentorship Endowment Award by the Association of Educational Communication and Technology and ETR&D 2005 Young Scholar Award by the journal Educational Technology Research and Development and ECT Foundation. Since August 2004, I have been happily working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Instructional Technology at Utah State University. I am currently directing a multidisciplinary research team in CREATE (Center for Research on Engaging Advanced Technology for Education), which conducts research projects, MathGirls and ART. MathGirls, funded by NSF, is a learning environment for the high-school students learning the fundamentals of algebra. ART, funded by Utah State University, is an environment, where 4 th and 5 th graders who start learning to read acquire a reading comprehension strategy, Questioning.
Articles
Desirable Characteristics of Learning Companions, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education (2007)
This study investigated the desirable characteristics of anthropomorphized learning-companion agents for college students. First, interviews...
Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions: The Impact of Agent Emotion and Gender (with A. L. Baylor and E. Shen), Journal of Computer-Assisted Learning (2007)
Abstract The potential of emotional interaction between human and computer has recently interested researchers in...
Pedagogical agents as social models to influence learner attitudes, Educational Technology (2007)
Based on social-cognitive theory, we describe the role of pedagogical agents as “social models.” In...
Pedagogical Agents as Social Models to Influence Learner Attitudes (with A. Baylor), Educational Technology (2007)
Based on social-cognitive theory, we describe the role of pedagogical agents as “social models.” In...
A Social-Cognitive Framework for Designing Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions (with Amy L. Baylor), Educational Technology Research and Development (2006)
Teaching and learning are highly social activities. Seminal psychologists such as Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura...
Contributions to Books
Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions: Building Social Relations with Learners, Artificial Intelligence in Education: Supporting Learning through Intelligent and Socially Informed Technology (2005)
This study examined the potential of pedagogical agents as learning companions (PALs) to build social...